“Syme was not only dead, he was abolished, an unperson.”

North Carolina: Birther stronghold

PPP, a rather reputable polling agency, polled North Carolina on the Birther issue, among other topics. There are gobs of data buried in their report. Check out the overall answers to the question: Do you think Obama was born in the United States?

Yes: 54%

No: 26%

Not Sure: 20%

Now check out the crosstabs of the answer by Republicans in NC:

Yes: 24

No: 47

Not Sure:29

For some added perspective, PPP decided to have some fun and ask whether Hawaii was part of the United States. The overall is listed first, with Republican answers in parentheses.

Yes: 92 (88)

No: 5 (7)

Not Sure: 3 (4)

Ok, so first things first. Yes, this is likely to shock a lot of people. And the business over Hawaii is just plain comical on its face. But I think it provides a clue to understanding the answers to the Birther question. I sincerely doubt that that many people actually think Obama was born in Kenya, or generally not in the U.S. While there are some genuine crazies like Orly Taitz, for a lot of people this is a coping mechanism. I didn’t list the crosstabs, but the Republican numbers are almost identical to those of McCain voters. If the question had asked whether Obama likes to have sex with goats (or whatever negative or ridiculous question), you would still see more Republicans answer “yes” than in the general population. The basic idea is that Obama is not “one of us,” or general incredulity at the election’s result. So they find a way to convince themselves that the results were fraudulent. That Obama was born elsewhere. Or that he was indeed born in Hawaii, but that Hawaii isn’t a real part of the U.S.

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It probably doesn’t help that when you primarily interact with other people geographically close to you (and probably ideologically close to you) birthers in high birther density areas end up feeling that their beliefs aren’t fringe beliefs at all. It leads to the questions “How can half of all the Republicans in this state be wrong? There must be at least SOME credibility to this claim if so many people are convinced that it’s true, right?” This is just the sort of question that, if asked from within the group of birthers or undecided people, seems to make sense. That is, unless you realize that it is just a horrible bandwagon fallacy which persistently ignores mountains of evidence to the contrary.

A better question for the birthers to ask would be “how can it be that I’m right and yet hardly any legitimate Republican politicians with a great vested interest in disqualifying Obama made this a real issue?”